5 Vital WordPress Plugins
There are thousands of plugins available for WordPress, and many of them can be very useful. It can be tempting to add dozens to a single blog, but this can be time consuming, and isn’t really necessary. I don’t recommend adding more than a handful of plugins to each blog, because you’ll have more to update and keep track of.
So let’s look at the 5 WordPress plugins you should absolutely be using on every blog you create!
The Platinum SEO Pack is an update version of the old All-in-One SEO Pack. It takes things one step further by automatically doing a 301 redirect any time the permalink of a page changes, so you don’t lose any PageRank or SE listings. If you only add ONE plugin, this is the one!
A sitemap is very important on any site, but especially on larger sites. It helps Google (and other search engines) find all of the pages on your site. This plugin helps you automatically generate a sitemap, which you should then submit to Google Webmaster Tools.
This plugin will remind visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed a certain number of times. It may alert them only the first time they visit, or you could set a specific number of visits, or you could set it to display all the time. It puts the reminder at the top or bottom of each post, as you specify.
Comments are the lifeblood of a blog. You should always encourage readers to leave their comments, and this will allow you to easily respond to specific comments. It will turn your comments into a type of forum thread. It’s very crucial for building a community on your blog.
Repeat visitors are also very important for blogs. When users subscribe to comments, they can be notified if someone responds to a comment they made on your blog. This can make visitors come back weeks or even months later when someone responds and digs up an old conversation! This is a super way to encourage repeat visitors.
Overall, you want plugins that bring in traffic. Each of these plugins focuses on bringing in new or repeat traffic, and encouraging visitors to return again and again. Other plugins may be fun or cute, but make sure you have these important plugins in place first!
Choosing Blog Topics
Choosing something to blog about is one of the most difficult parts of blogging for many bloggers. Almost everyone experiences “writer’s block” from time to time, but when you need to be blogging regularly, this is tough.
There are a few methods I use to break through these blocks. I need to find inspiration, so that’s what I do. I go looking for inspiration in a few different places.
My first stop is always Ezine Articles. With thousands and thousands of articles, there are plenty of topics to choose from. I don’t copy the articles there, I just use them for ideas about topics. Once I’ve chosen a topic, I write each article from scratch.
Each day, Google sends me alerts with the latest news and blog posts about the topic I choose. This is incredibly helpful, and best of all, it’s free!
Other Blogs
The most obvious choice for getting ideas would, of course, be other blogs in the niche. Almost any niche you can think of has dozens of blogs available, and most of them have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of posts to inspire you.
News Websites
If you’re in a major niche, the various news websites should also provide you with some inspiration. If you’ve written about nearly everything you can think of, sometimes breaking news will inspire you. In fact, sometimes a news story that isn’t even related directly to your niche will give you inspiration.
Inspiration is all around you. You just have to look for it. If you take the time to look for the inspiration, you can break through these blocks and think of topics to write about. Just don’t give up. One of the most important secrets to making money blogging is to keep posting regularly. If you don’t, your rankings could slip, your readers could stop coming back, and your traffic could fall. Just keep blogging regularly and you will succeed.
